From the staff of New York Magazine comes the perfect gift for the Manhattanite in all of us. My First New York is a glorious collection of recollections and reminiscences as fifty of the city’s most famous residents recapture the kicks and thrills of first arriving in the Big Apple. Actors and athletes, rock stars and porn stars, writers, artists, and politicos—from Yogi Berra to Liza Minnelli, from Chloe Sevigny to Andy Samberg to Diane Von Furstenberg—they all share their hilarious, touching, frightening, amazing early big city adventures in My First New York.

From some of the most remarkable people who have called the city home, come fifty-six candid accounts of long nights out and wild nights in, of first dates and lost loves, of memorable meals and miserable jobs, of slow walks up Broadway and fast subway rides downtown. From a mix of actors, artists, comedians, entrepreneurs, politicians, sports stars, writers, and more, these moving and memorable stories combine to form an impressionistic history of New York since the Great Depression, an accidental encyclopedia of New York hotspots through the ages, and a testament to a larger revelation, one that new arrivals of all stripes and eras have experienced again and again: what the songwriter Rufus Wainwright calls "having cracked the code of living life to the fullest."

"Celebrate[s] all the quirkiness, beauty, creativity, eccentricity, and artistry that is New York City."